Home’s story nearly ended before it began. On a bitter January night in 1746, the 23-year-old stood shivering with fellow prisoners in Doune Castle. Captured at the Battle of Falkirk while fighting against the Jacobites, they were fearful of being executed the next day. Desperate, the prisoners tore strips from their blankets, fashioned a rope, and escaped down the castle walls. Home made it but another prisoner fell and broke his ankle. Home helped carry his injured companion to safety, evading pursuing Jacobite soldiers before he made his way eventually home to Leith.

John Home was born in Leith in 1722 to a respectable family who lived on Maritime Street. His father served as town clerk, and whilst they were not rich, they had family links to the Earl of Home. Before becoming – briefly – a soldier, Home seemed destined for orthodoxy. After attending Leith Grammar School and Edinburgh University to study divinity, he qualified as a Church of Scotland minister in 1745. Yet his volunteer service against the Jacobites hinted at an unconventional spirit that would define his life.

Not long after his daring escape, John was appointed minister of a church in sleepy Athelstaneford in East Lothian. He found himself torn between duty and passion. By day he served his parish; by night he pursued poetry and drama, mixing with Edinburgh’s intellectual elite during a period that would become known later as the Scottish Enlightenment.

Home moved in remarkable company. His friends included historian Adam Ferguson, philosopher David Hume (a distant relative), and other luminaries of the Select Society and Poker Club. Hume, arguably the greatest intellect Scotland has ever produced, encouraged Home’s literary ambitions despite the Church’s hostility toward the world of theatre.

Home’s first dramatic work, Agis, based on Plutarch’s narrative, was completed in the late 1740s. However, there was barely any theatrical scene in Scotland so - in 1749 - he travelled to London to offer it to David Garrick, the era’s greatest actor and manager of the Drury Lane Theatre. Garrick’s rejection devastated Home, who went to Shakespeare’s tomb in Westminster Abbey and wrote a poem in pencil upon it, including the lines ‘To this place I come/To ease my bursting bosom at thy tomb’. Nowadays, Leithers tend to deal with earth-shattering news in a different way.

But Home was incredibly resilient. Undeterred, he spent five years crafting his masterpiece, a tragedy titled Douglas. Further humiliation awaited him when he travelled once more to London and Garrick rejected this work too, declaring it “totally unfit for the stage”. Despondent, he returned home, but his friends rallied around him. They persuaded him to stage the play at Edinburgh’s only theatre in the Canongate.

However, Home was writing in a very difficult period – with echoes of the ‘Culture Wars’ that exist today. The Church of Scotland learnt that the play was being rehearsed and applied pressure on all those involved to ‘cancel’ Douglas. But Home, and his friends who constituted the vanguard of the Scottish Enlightenment, were determined to proceed, whatever the cost. 

In the rehearsals, roles were played by John Home himself, and other notable Enlightenment figures including David Hume, Church of Scotland minister Hugh Blair (who played the maid..) and Adam Ferguson (often called the founder of sociology).

The premiere of Douglas on December 14, 1756, marked a watershed moment for Scottish theatre. The audience, swept up in the tragic tale of Lady Randolph and her lost son Young Norval, erupted in patriotic fervour. One enthusiastic theatregoer famously bellowed, “Whaur’s yer Wullie Shakespeare noo?” Testament to Scotland’s pride in its new literary hero.

However, success came at a cost. The Church of Scotland, viewing theatre as immoral, vindictively pursued anyone connected to the production. Ministers who attended performances faced disciplinary action, and – aware he was about to be prosecuted – Home was forced to resign his ministry in 1757, losing his means of supporting himself. A ‘pamphlet war’ broke out, each side either criticising or supporting the play and John Home.

The Church’s targeting of John Home, and the notion of artistic independence, backfired spectacularly. Home was friends with Lord Bute, a leading politician who would become the first Scot to serve as Prime Minister. Bute was also incredibly well connected, and a close friend and tutor to the Prince of Wales (later King George III). When Bute learned of Home’s treatment, he appointed the Leither as his private secretary and included him in the Prince’s education as a literary and intellectual mentor.

This was on its own a significant event for John Home. George III reigned over a turbulent time in British history, encompassing the loss of the American Colonies, the French Revolution, and the enormous political and social changes that arose out of the Industrial Revolution. Home and Bute influenced how the king thought and that in turn influenced British history.

This royal connection transformed Home’s life. Garrick and other theatre managers in London no longer dealing with an obscure, failed poet from Scotland, had to take a close friend of Bute and the Prince of Wales, much more seriously. The Covent Garden theatre put on Douglas in 1757 to great acclaim, and Garrick himself acted in a number of Home’s plays at Garrick’s Drury Lane playhouse.

Whilst Home achieved success in London with other plays such as The Siege of Aquileia and The Fatal Discovery, it was Douglas that would become a staple of British and foreign theatres in the English-speaking world for decades. Its lines “My name is Norval…” were once famous, and when researching the article, I came across an advert in the early 1800s for a performance of Douglas in what was then the only theatre in New York. It is hard to imagine another Leither having a similar cultural impact during his own era excepting – Irvine Welsh.

Living at Bute’s London residence, Home finally achieved financial security after Bute gave him a well-paid honorary office, and George III provided a generous pension. In his free time, Home frequented the British Coffee House in London, mixing with literary figures including Tobias Smollett and Garrick himself (now a close friend).

Despite his London success, he maintained close friendships in Edinburgh, particularly with David Hume. When the great philosopher became seriously ill, John Home accompanied him on a trip to Bath to seek a cure. It failed, and in David Hume’s will, he left his Leither friend a gift of bottles of claret. It was a testament to both that Hume – the atheist – and Home – the former Church of Scotland minister – could overcome their different views on religion and be so close.

After Bute’s retirement, Home’s influence waned. Whilst several of his works had been received well at Drury Lane, a tragedy named Alfred failed with London audiences in 1778, marking the twilight of his writing career. Returning to Scotland in his fifties, and – now a man of leisure with a good pension - he got married and became a gentleman soldier, joining the Midlothian Fencibles. However, his luck had finally run out. He suffered a severe head injury after falling from a horse, and his intellectual capabilities were permanently damaged.

He managed to complete his final work, History of the Rebellion 1745 – a good read given his personal involvement. However, it was dedicated to George III, and was not well received in Scotland. Many felt – rightly – Home went too easy on his friends in the Hanoverian regime. Home moved back to Edinburgh, continuing to mix with his old friends before he died in 1808 at the age of 86.

John Home’s life embodied the Scottish Enlightenment’s spirit: a divinity student turned soldier, and a controversial yet celebrated writer who took on conservative forces that were trying to prevent the modern world as we know it taking shape. He befriended a prime minister and a king, and his greatest achievement wasn’t literary quality but cultural impact. Proving that Scottish writers could succeed independently of London’s approval.

Douglas demonstrated that Scotland possessed its own dramatic voice, inspiring the next generation of Scots to pursue their dreams. For a Leither who began life as a town clerk’s son, Home’s journey in royal circles and his literary success remains extraordinary.

So, the next time you pass through Leith kirkyard or Maritime Street, where a plaque marks his former home, remember this remarkable man. Leith’s very own Shakespeare, whose courage and talent opened doors for Scottish literature that remain open today.